The Quest Part 40

The bread leavings, vegetable leaves and fruit cores were reserved for the feed of the pigs and hens, and what was of no use at all was cast into the rotting-place, converted into manure and sold to the orchards near the river.

On the first Sunday that Manuel spent there, Senor Custodio and his wife took the afternoon off. For many a day they had never gone out together because they were afraid to leave the house alone; this day they dressed up in their best and went on a visit to their daughter, who worked as a modiste in a relative's shop.

Manuel was glad to be left by himself with Reverte, contemplating the house, the yard, the ditch; he turned the carrousel round and it creaked ill-humouredly; he climbed up the swing frame, looked down at the hens, teased the pig a little and then ran up and down with the dog chasing after him barking merrily in feigned fury.

This dark depression attracted Manuel somehow or other, with its rubbish heaps, its gloomy hovels, its comical, dismantled merry-go-round, its swings, and its ground that held so many surprises, for a rough, ordinary pot burgeoned from its depths as easily as a lady's elegant perfume phial; the rubber bulb of a prosaic syringe grew side by side with the satin, scented sheet of a love letter.

This rough, humble life, sustained by the detritus of a refined, vicious existence; this almost savage career in the suburbs of a metropolis, filled Manuel with enthusiasm. It seemed to him that all the stuff cast aside in scorn by the capital,--the ordure and broken tubs, the old flower-pots and toothless combs, b.u.t.tons and sardine tins,--all the rubbish thrown aside and spurned by the city, was dignified and purified by contact with the soil.

Manuel thought that if in time he should become the owner of a little house like Senor Custodio's, and of a cart and donkeys, and hens and a dog, and find in addition a woman to love him, he would be one of the almost happy men in this world.

CHAPTER VII

Senor Custodio's Ideas--La Justa, El Carnicerin, and El Conejo.

Senor Custodio was an intelligent fellow of natural gifts, very observant and quick to take advantage of a situation. He could neither read nor write, yet made notes and kept accounts; with crosses and scratches of his own invention he devised a subst.i.tute for writing, at least for the purposes of his own business.

Senor Custodio was exceedingly eager for knowledge, and if it weren't that the notion struck him as ridiculous, he would have set about learning how to read and write. In the afternoon, work done, he would ask Manuel to read the newspapers and the ill.u.s.trated reviews that he picked up on the streets, and the ragdealer and his wife listened with the utmost attention.

Senor Custodio had, too, several volumes of novels in serial form that had been left behind by his daughter, and Manuel began to read them aloud.

The comment of the ragdealer, who took this fiction for historic truth, was always perspicacious and just, revelatory of an instinct for reasoning and common sense. The man's realistic criticism was not always to Manuel's taste, and at times the boy would make bold to defend a romantic, immoral thesis. Senor Custodio, however, would at once cut him short, refusing to let him continue.

For professional reasons the ragdealer was much preoccupied with thought of the manure that went to waste in Madrid. He would say to Manuel:

"Can you imagine how much money all the refuse that comes from Madrid is worth?"

"No."

"Then figure it out. At seventy centimos per arroba, the millions of arrobas that it must amount to in a year.... Spread this over the suburbs and have the waters of the Manzanares and the Lozoya irrigating all these lands, and you'd see a world of gardens and orchards everywhere."

Another of the fellow's fixed ideas was that of reclaiming used material. It seemed to him that lime and sand could be extracted from mortar refuse, live plaster from old, dead plaster, and he imagined that this reclamation would yield a huge sum of money.

Senor Custodio, who had been born near the very depression in which his house was situated, felt for his particular district, and for Madrid in general, a deep enthusiasm; the Manzanares, to him, was as considerable a river as the Amazon.

Senor Custodio had two children, of whom Manuel knew only Juan, a tall, swarthy sport who was married to the daughter of a laundry proprietress in La Bombilla. The ragdealer's daughter, Justa by name, was a modiste in a shop.

During the first few weeks neither of the children came to their parents' home. Juan lived in the laundry and Justa with a relative of hers who owned a workshop.

Manuel, who spent many hours in conversation with Senor Custodio, noted very soon that the rag-dealer, though fully aware of his very humble condition, was a man of extraordinary pride and that as regarded honour and virtue he had the ideas of a mediaeval n.o.bleman.

One Sunday, after he had been living there a month Manuel had finished his meal and was standing at the door when he saw a girl with her skirts gathered come running down the slope of the dumping-ground. As she approached and he got a close look at her, Manuel went red and then blanched. It was the la.s.s that had come two or three times to the lodging-house to fit the Baroness's dresses; but she had since then grown to womanhood.

She drew near, raising her skirt and her starched petticoats, careful not to soil her patent-leather slippers.

"What can she be coming here for?" Manuel asked himself.

"Is father in?" she inquired.

Senor Custodio came out and embraced her. She was the ragdealer's daughter of whom Manuel was forever hearing and whom, without knowing just why, he had imagined as a very thin, emaciated, disagreeable creature.

Justa walked into the kitchen and after looking over the chairs, to see whether there was anything on them that might soil her clothes, she sat down upon one of them. She began to pour forth a flood of unceasing chatter and roared at her own jokes.

Manuel listened without a word; to tell the truth she wasn't quite so good-looking as he had imagined, but she didn't please him any the less for that. She might be about eighteen, was brunette, rather short, with very dark, flashing eyes, a tilted, pert nose, a sensual mouth and thick lips. She was, too, a bit full behind and in the b.r.e.a.s.t.s and the hips; she was neat, fresh, with a very high top-knot and a pair of brand-new, polished slippers.

As Justa gabbled on, to the ecstasy of her parents, there came into the kitchen a hump-backed fellow from one of the neighbouring hovels; he was called El Conejo (the rabbit) and his face really showed a great resemblance to the amiable rodent whose name he bore.

El Conejo was a member of Senor Custodio's fraternity and knew Justa since she had been a child; Manuel used to see him every day, but never paid any attention to him.

The Rabbit walked into Senor Custodio's and began to talk nonsense, laughing in violent outbursts, but in so mechanical a manner that it provoked his hearers, for it seemed that behind this continuous laughter lay a very deep bitterness. Justa touched his hump, for, as is known, this brings good luck, whereupon El Conejo exploded with merriment.

"Have you been lugged up again before the chief?" she asked.

"Oh, yes. Often ... hee-hee ..."

"What for?"

"Because the other day I started to shout in the street: 'Bargains!

Who'll buy Sagasta's umbrella, Kruger's hat, the Pope's urinal, a syringe lost by a nun while she was talking with the sacristan! ..."

El Conejo trumpeted this at the top of his lungs and Justa held her sides with laughter.

"And don't you sing ma.s.s any more the way you used to?"

"Oh, sure."

"Let's hear it, then."

The humpback had taken for his scandalous parody, the Preface of the Ma.s.s, and for the sacred words he subst.i.tuted others with which he announced his business. He began to bellow:

"Who will sell me any ... slippers ... pants ... hempen sandals ...

old shoes ... secondhand clothes ... syringes ... urinals and even chemises."

The hunchback's cries made Justa laugh nervously. El Conejo, after repeating the Preface several times took up the melody of the rogations and sang some strains in a high soprano, others in a ba.s.so profundo:

"The high silk-hat" ... and instead of saying _Liberanos domine_, he went on: "I'll buy for spot cash.... Your old vest ... will fetch a five-peseta piece...."

Then he had to stop to let Justa laugh.

She was not slow in perceiving that she had attracted Manuel, and despite the fact that he seemed no great conquest to her, she became serious, egged him on and glanced at him furtively with looks that sent the boy's blood pounding faster.

After the ragdealer's daughter had left, Manuel felt as if he had been abandoned to darkness. He thought that he could live for two or three weeks on her incendiary glances alone.

The next day, when Manuel met El Conejo he listened to the nonsense that the hunchback spoke, with his eternal harping on the Bishop of Madrid-Alcala, and then tried to shift the conversation toward the topic of Senor Custodio and his family.